Friends and Others I Admire

Politics

Subscribe through email

Enter your email here to subscribe to my blog.

Join 3,323 other followers

writing exercise #48: She realized that the person in front of her in line was the defeated candidate.

She realized that the person in front of her in line was the defeated candidate. In his jammies. He looked unshaven by at least a few days. His jammies, camo green, had elephants on the pants and the button up shirt matched the color, turquoise, of the pachyderm print. This made her feel especially bad that she’d been out of town during the election and hadn’t bothered to send in her absentee ballot. Shit. He’d only lost by a few hundred votes. And he was so cute.
Their eyes met.
“Hi,” she said.
“Oh, hi,” he mumbled.
Asking how it was going seemed insensitive, so she opted for, “Sure is sunny out today!”
He agreed. Added something about the drought.
“Right,” she said. “The drought. It’s terrible.” She tried to remember how she was supposed to feel. What she was supposed to do. Probably not take such long showers.
He accepted his gluten-fee double chocolate muffin and shuffled to a table. She ordered her soy latte, 16 ounces, and joined him.
“So,” she said.
Their eyes met again. Like something out of a romance novel, she thought.
What the hell, she thought. She sat down next to him.
“I thought you were a great candidate,” she said.
“Oh, thanks,” he responded. He looked down at his attire as if noticing it for the first time.
“It’s my face,” he said. “It’s not a good face.”
“Soy latte? Grande?” the barista called. She stood, picked it up, returned.
She examined his forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, cheekbones. “I think your face is fine,” she said. “Pleasing, actually.”
He chuckled, glanced at the ground. Then, without moving his head, tilted his eyes at her. “Want to come over?”
What was she to do? Poor guy, had been crushed by the opposition, except not crushed, exactly, but overwhelmed. And so they shared a moment of skin on skin, kisses, the reaching of hands across bodies.
Immediately after, she felt that familiar need to race to the door. Why was it such a challenge to find someone who felt the way she felt, emotionally, politically, physically? Was she asking too much?
I hate this, she thought. It’s all so corny, cliché. Who cared? The voters, she thought. They were the ones who got robbed. Their apathy, their busy lives, wait, she thought, I am one of those with the busy life. Just a couple hundred votes and he could’ve been a winner, earning an upper middle class wage and leading constituents into the future. Instead, here he was, with her, awkwardly preparing for a moment that wouldn’t matter immediately after and there ya go.
Afterwards, he turned to her. “Do you think I have a chance?” he asked.
She paused. “Maybe 2016,” she cooed. “That might be your year.”

3 Comments

Dog

He won before for the same reasons you describe so well. He lost for the same reasons. He had an opportunity and squandered it. The excuse that it’s all about face and not about character is what sent you bolting for the door.

There are such things as one nights stands and one moment stands are quite another matter. Perhaps you should rethink your fascination with elephants and their shadows.

The boy showed his colors all right, just when the cameras were not looking….only your compassionate self. It’s a classic conflict of identities or, if you will accept the premise that it is a conflict of images: Two very different things.

reading

Seven Tenths: The Sea and its Thresholds by James Hamilton PatersonKill All Your Darlings by Luc Sante

read

waiting

The Autobiography of Mark TwainBilly Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben FountainThe Glass Ocean by Lori BakerLost At Sea by Jon RonsonRaised from the Ground by José SaramagoWoes of the True Policeman by Roberto BolañoImperfect Birds by Anne LamottThe Beach by Alex GarlandThe Sun and The Moon by Matthew GoodmanA Reliable Wife by Robert Goolwick
...taking suggestions!